


Aftermath

by Skye_Writer



Category: Pacific Rim (2013)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-10
Updated: 2013-08-10
Packaged: 2017-12-23 00:35:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 765
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/919900
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Skye_Writer/pseuds/Skye_Writer
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The media frenzy begins in Hong Kong and only spreads from there, first to the Pan-Pacific nations and then to the rest of the world.<br/>Written for Jaegercon Bingo. Prompt: Aftermath.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Aftermath

1.  
The atmosphere at the Shatterdome is a queer combination of elation and grief. The war’s been won, the clock has stopped, but at a cost. The last of the working Jaegers are gone, taking with them their pilots and the man who got them all this far. There are already makeshift memorials set up for the Weis and the Kaidanovskys; it’s almost no work at all to add Chuck Hansen and Stacker Pentecost to their walls. The gifts and mementos left at the memorials reflect the broad diversity of the Shatterdome crews—there are candles and cheap silk flowers and burned sticks of incense, and so much more than that.

There is a child’s red shoe among the notes and flowers at one point. It stays there for about a day before it vanishes again.

2.  
The dust had barely settled when the storm began. The journalists began arriving in Hong Kong.

Hercules had released his report to the PPDC heads and the UN the day after the battle at the Breach. After that, though, none of them were too concerned with what happened next. Mako and Herc were both in mourning, and Raleigh made sure he was there for both of them—for the Ranger he respected and the co-pilot he cared about and loved almost as much as he had Yancy.

And then the journalists arrived.

3.  
The media frenzy begins in Hong Kong and only spreads from there, first to the Pan-Pacific nations and then to the rest of the world. It’s a whirlwind with Raleigh and Mako at the very center, and Raleigh has to admit their story sounds like a reporter’s wet dream. A has-been back for one last fight, paired up with a talented rookie out to avenge her family—it’s the perfect underdog story, like a movie playing out in real life.

The PPDC initiates the tour, packing Mako and Raleigh and some of the others—Tendo, Herc, and even Drs. Gottlieb and Geizsler—into jets bound for the Pan-Pacific nations and then some. Raleigh remembers some of the schtick from the old days, but this is bigger than any of that. It’s not just the battle they’ve won, it’s the war.

And the world wants to meet its newest heroes.

4.  
It gets a bit too much sometimes. It’s not just the touring, which is tiring in its own way—it’s the interviews, the chat shows, the meetings with PPDC reps and national leaders. To say nothing of the public events and the odd parade. It all closes in around Mako like a fist, and she finds herself wishing for design to tweak and tinker with, or maybe a sparring match with someone in the Kwoon. She missed the camaraderie of the Shatterdome, and the world she had there. She missed Gipsy Danger sorely, like a piece of her heart had been ripped away and lost forever.

She missed Stacker Pentecost even more than that.

But there was always Raleigh. Her co-pilot, her partner, her friend. He could read her almost as well as she could him, and in the chaos of the tour, he was really her only constant. They would spend jet-lagged nights talking or sometimes just sitting together in one or the other’s hotel room. When the crowds got too much for her, his hand would find hers and squeeze just once.

She would look up at him and smile just enough so he could see, and they’d carry on together.

5.  
Someone, somewhere—they never find out who—gets the bright idea to book Newton Geizsler and Hermann Gottlieb for an American talk show.

The interview begins cordially enough, but nosedives when the doctors begin talking over each other, and literally goes up in flames when Newt knocks down a hot light while attempting to explain _something_ about kaiju brain chemistry.

The video segment becomes a hit with the public, particularly online, but the PPDC media manager keeps the doctors on straightforward (and separate) interviews thereafter.

6.  
“Will you come back to Hong Kong?” Mako asks one night near the end of the tour.

The Shatterdome was staying open to continue research into the Drift technology and the biotechnology that had created the Kaiju. Not really Raleigh’s areas of expertise. He’d joined up to be a Jaeger pilot, but now the Jaegers were gone, and thankfully no longer needed. He didn’t have a place there anymore.

But he looked at her and said, “Yeah, probably.”

Because at the end of it all, at the beginning of after, they still had each other.


End file.
